We are One: Understanding the Maintenance of Black Democratic Party Loyalty

Chryl N. Laird1

Department of Government and Legal Studies

Bowdoin College

Corrine M. McConnaughy

Department of Political Science

George Washington University

Julian J. Wamble

Department of Government & Politics University of Maryland, College Park

Ismail K. White

Department of Political Science

Duke University

Abstract

Despite growing ideological diversity within the group, black Americans have been able to maintain their overwhelmingly unified support for the Democratic Party. We argue that black Democratic partisanship is upheld, in part, through black Americans’ use of social sanctions (both positive and negative) to encourage compliance with a group norm of Democratic Party support. Leveraging the exogenous assignment of racial social context provided by the race of interviewer in face-to-face American National Election survey interviews of black respondents, we demonstrate the racialized social imperative of black Democratic Party identification. We show that black respondents are more likely to identify as Democrats in the presence of other blacks, particularly those whose conservative ideological placement provides cross-pressuring incentive to otherwise make an alternative partisan choice. Our social explanation of black partisan homogeneity is a significant departure from previous accounts that have focused almost exclusively on attitudinal ascriptions to racial shared fate.

1 All correspondence regarding the manuscript should be directed to Ismail White at

whiteik@gwu.edu

1

Much has been made of African Americans’ nearly unanimous support for the Democratic

Party in the post-Civil Rights era. Indeed, since 1976 black support for Democratic presidential

candidates has rarely dipped below 80% and has exceeded 90% in some elections. In explaining

blacks’ unified commitment to the Democratic Party, scholars often point to the presidential

election of 1964, Democratic support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Voting Right Act

as defining moments that crystallized the idea of the Democrats as the party of black interests

(Rigueur 2014). While important, it is not obvious that events from over fifty years ago can explain

why the unanimous black support for the Democratic Party remains steadfast, particularly in the

face of growing political conservatism within the black community (Tate 2010).

In fact, the curiosity of blacks’ persistently high levels of Democratic identification becomes

more striking when placed alongside the trends of increasing ideological sorting across parties for

other racial/ethnic groups in recent years. And while research has cast doubt on the idea that

liberal/conservative ideology is the primary basis for citizen’s partisanship (Converse 1964; Huddy,

Mason, and Aarøe 2015; Kinder and Kalmoe 2017), for white and Hispanic Americans, at least, the

two beliefs are certainly strongly related. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 American National

Election Studies (ANES) surveys, figures 1a and 1b demonstrate the strong connection between

Democratic Party identification and liberal/conservative ideology for white and Hispanic Americans.

However, the figures also demonstrate that the relationship between black Democratic identification

and liberal/conservative ideology is remarkably weak. Of particular note: approximately 75 percent

of self-identified black conservatives still identify as Democrats.2

2 The 2012 and 2016 ANES did not include a sufficient number of Asian Americans with which to

replicate this analysis.

2

Figure 1. Probability of Identifying as a Democrat by Ideology and Race, 95% Confidence Intervals

2012 ANES 2016 ANES

Note: Results are marginal effects of the bivariate relationship between ideology and Democratic

Party identification with 95% confidence intervals. These results are only for respondents

interviewed in face-to-face ANES interviews.

In this paper, we take up and answer the question of why black conservatives are so

unwilling to abandon the Democratic Party. We contend that supporting the Democratic Party is

understood by black Americans as a normalized form of black political behavior, a behavioral choice for

which blacks hold one another accountable. This explanation builds on work in role identity theory,

which highlights that social interactions inform how individuals see themselves as members of a

group. In-group connectedness therefore provides social accountability as a constraint on black

political behavior, and the social benefits of conformity and likely social consequences for defection

from expected group behavior are made salient even by the simple presence of other in-group

members. Thus, high degrees of social interconnection among blacks constrain even those who have

ideological reasons to defect from the group norm of supporting the Democratic Party (i.e., black

conservatives) from doing so.

We test our argument by leveraging data from social interactions during the face-to face

survey interview process. We find that when asked to report their party identification in face-to-face

3

surveys, the presence of a black interviewer powerfully constrains black respondents’ willingness to

identify as anything other than a Democrat. The differences in party identification across race of

interviewer are most pronounced among exactly those whose individual preferences and social

identification diverge: blacks who identify as ideologically conservative. We interpret this as evidence

to support the argument that racialized behavioral expectations, not just shared policy attitudes or

group affinities, play an important role in the maintenance of black political unity.

Understanding Black Partisanship

The dominant theoretical perspective for understanding attitudinal constraints on black

political opinions has been Dawson’s (1994) black utility heuristic model. Dawson’s central idea is

that of a notion of shared or linked fate—that African Americans have come to see their individual

interests as inseparable from the interests of the larger racial group. The interests of the racial group

thus become central to black political judgements via cues that activate this latent predisposition

(White 2007).

Linked fate is commonly measured by just a single survey question that asks blacks whether

they think that what happens generally to black people in this country will have something to do

with what happens in their individual lives. Dawson and others have shown that not only do a high

proportion of African Americans agree with this statement, but also that their endorsement of

linked fate is a reliable predictor of a range of political positions, namely support for racial policies

and black political figures (Allen, Dawson, and Brown 1989; Brown and Shaw 2002; Dawson 1994,

2003; Gay 2004; Gurin, Hatchett, Jackson 1990; Hajnal and Lee 2011; Miller, Gurin, Gurin and

Malanchuk 1981; Simien 2005; White 2007).

Yet, the linked fate paradigm is not without its limitations. In particular, linked fate does not

seem to be particularly useful in explaining black Democratic Party identification (Hutchings and

Jefferson 2014). Indeed, while Dawson’s own work frequently alludes to a connection between black

4

group interest, as measured by linked fate, and party identification, there is, in fact, little empirical

evidence demonstrating such a relationship, and a growing number of studies showing at best a

weak or conditional relationship between Democratic Party identification and linked fate (Hajnal

and Lee 2011; Tate 1992; Hutchings and Jefferson 2014; Philpot 2017).

We took up our own analysis on the connection between linked fate and black identification

with the Democratic Party by analyzing six different surveys3 that span more than thirty years, from

1984 to 2016. For each survey, we built a simple model of Democratic identification that included

controls for age, sex, education and liberal/conservative ideology. The predicted effect of black

linked fate on blacks’ willingness to identify as Democrats across the surveys is presented in Figure

2. As the figure illustrates, the connection between the linked fate measure and Democratic Party

identification is, in nearly all cases, weak or nonexistent. Although higher levels of linked fate

generally do appear to increase the probability of a black person identifying as a Democrat, the

average effect size of linked fate across all these data sources is about four percentage points. At no

point does the probability of low linked fate blacks identifying as Democrats dip below .80. If linked

fate plays a significant role in explaining black Democratic partisanship, it is not in the

straightforward way alluded to by Dawson.

3 All 6 surveys are probability samples with over-samples of black Americans.

5

Figure 2. Relationship Between Linked Fate and Democratic Party Identification

Note: Includes controls for age, sex, education and liberal/conservative ideology. Bivariate models

produce similarly small relationships. Results represent the marginal effect of linked fate on

Democratic Party identification with 95% confidence intervals. Results from the 2012 and 2016

ANES only include data from face-to-face interviews.

Perhaps one might reason that linked fate fails to empirically predict Democratic Party

identification is because there is so little variation in Democratic Party identification to be explained.

6

We are less concerned, however, with the empirical predictive power of linked fate for Democratic

Party identification than with its theoretical purchase. In Dawson’s linked fate framework, support

for the Democratic Party is expected even for those whose ideological, class, or other individual

interests do not align very well with that of the Democratic Party’s platform because they perceive

the Democratic Party to be more likely to represent the interests of blacks as group (Dawson 2003;

xii). Put more simply, linked fate makes Democrats of even black conservatives because race still

aligns their interests with those of the group. It is this particular theoretical argument that we take on

in our investigation of black conservatives’ loyalty to the Democratic Party.4

It remains unclear, however, why individual black Americans, like black conservatives, with

self-interested or ideological incentives to support the Republican Party would not simply rationalize

the Republican Party’s positions on race to bring them more in line with their own beliefs.

Republicans, after all, frequently offer explanations for why it would be in black Americans’

collective and individual interests to support the Republican Party. Many of the limited government,

self-help, personal responsibility, and moral arguments offered to blacks by Republicans are couched

in terms of black empowerment and racial group uplift. Why, then, would those blacks who see it in

their individual or ideological interest to support the Republican Party not simply use these

arguments as a means of resolving the linked fate dissonance?

Role Identity

4 We recognize that the explanation we will offer in this paper to explain why black conservatives are

loyal to the Democratic Party is potentially one of several. However, we place our focus on

challenging Dawson’s linked fate framework because it is the predominant theory used to explain

black political behavior and decision-making.

7

To resolve our questions about the tenuous connection between linked fate and black

Democratic Party identification in the face of cross-cutting pressures, we turn to work on role

identities (Turner 1978; Stryker 1980; Hogg, Terry and White 1995). What role identity theory

(sometimes known as Identity Theory, see Hogg, Terry and White 1995) offers is an interpretation

of black political behavior that centers on the shared social understandings and expectations that

have grown out of these experiences as well as the internalization of shared experiences. Frequently

used to explain gender identity, role identity theorists consider one’s sense of self to be the outcome

of the individual’s interactions with others (Mead 1934) and not simply the result of a mere

psychological connection with a social category (Tajfel and Turner 1979). Hogg et. al (1995) describe

role identities as “self-conceptions, self-referent cognitions, or self-definitions that people apply to

themselves…Ultimately it is through social interaction that identities actually acquire self-meaning;

they are reflexive” (256-257). The theory also focuses on the expectations of other group members

and how group members will respond to noncompliance with group expectations. Hogg et. al (1995)

state:

…a role is a set of expectations prescribing behavior that is considered appropriate by

others … The perception that one is enacting a role satisfactorily should enhance

feelings of self-esteem, whereas perceptions of poor role performance may engender

doubts about one's self-worth, and may even produce symptoms of psychological

distress ... Distress may arise if feedback from others-in the form of reflected appraisals

or perceptions of the self-suggested by others' behavior-is perceived to be incongruent

with one's identity. (p.257)

A focus on role identity would alter the way we understand black political decision-making by

moving our attention away from a perspective that necessitates a strict connection between

individual and group interest, to a focus on relational interactions that would account for both

8

interpersonal interactions and importantly intra-racial norms and expectations (Brewer 2001) about

how one should behave politically as a black person.

Although they do not explicitly reference role identity theory, this is essentially what White,

Laird and Allen (2014) describe in their discussion of their experiments examining black political

decision making during the 2012 election. In an effort to understand how blacks make tradeoffs

between group and simple self-interest, White et al. (2014) demonstrate that social pressure from

other blacks to conform to expectations of “black” political behavior can powerfully constrain black

political decisions. While persuasive, the applicability of the White et al (2014) argument to

understanding black decision making in different political contexts, and to specifically explaining

black partisan homogeneity, remains somewhat unclear. By applying the insights gained from role

identity theory and White et al (2014), to the understanding of black partisanship, we are better able

to understand how norms and expectations of partisan identification get enforced within an

individual’s dominant racial context. In short, in order to understand the maintenance of black

partisan solidarity, we must consider how role identity and intra-racial social constraint influence

black political behavior.

We argue that many years of essentially undifferentiated black support for the Democratic

Party have resulted in the normalization of Democratic Party identification within the black

community, such that identifying as a Democrat is a well-understood expectation within the black

community of how one should behave politically. Awareness of these expectations is illustrated

nicely in the results of a 2016 survey conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic

Research. In a nationally representative sample of black and white Obama voters, researchers asked

the following question: “If you had instead voted for Romney/Ryan in 2012, to what extent would

your friends/family members be supportive of this decision.” The survey found that while the vast

majority of African American Obama voters (75%) felt that their friends and family members would

9

not be supportive of such a decision, only a little more than half of white Obama voters (54%)

reported the same. This result suggests that African Americans face a unique set of expectations (or

norms) of political behavior that they understand as likely enforced through close social ties with

other blacks. These expectations, we argue, have led to an understanding within the black

community that supporting the Democratic Party is “just something that black people do.” Given

the widespread reinforcement of this norm, through repeated observation that most blacks do in

fact support the Democratic Party, the act of publicly supporting the Democratic Party among

blacks could reasonably be seen as a racial identity (or role) confirming behavior that individual

blacks perform in an attempt to obtain social confirmation or status from other blacks. Once this

behavior is confirmed and/or rewarded, individual blacks then come to see these acts as linked to

identity affirmation and thus the behavior is repeated. Likewise, publicly supporting the Republican

Party would likely be viewed as an anti-social or anti-group behavior as it reflects a rejection of the

expected group behavior.

Race of Interviewer Analysis

Design

To demonstrate the process by which black party unity is maintained through racialized social

pressure to comply with black role expectations, we leverage the interracial constraints on black

political beliefs created through the assignment of black and white interviewers to black respondents

during the face-to-face survey interviews5 of the cumulative American National Election Study

5 We use only face-to-face interviews because they more accurately capture meaningful social

interactions.

10

(ANES) surveys from 1988 to 20126, the 2004 to 2016 General Social Survey and the 2012 ANES.

The ANES and GSS studies are nationally representative face-to-face surveys that when pooled over

time offer a reasonably large number of African American respondents. The 2012 ANES survey is

particularly useful as it has a somewhat large, nationally representative sample of black respondents,

which allows for nuanced analysis of black political behavior at the national level.7 Using these data,

we examine the effects of black and white interviewers on how blacks respond to survey questions

that measure partisanship. We think the effect of interviewer race on self-reported partisanship is an

ideal means of testing the ability of racialized social pressure/expectations to constrain partisan

defection. Despite the fact that much of political science research considers partisanship a stable

disposition (Campbell et al. 1960), we argue that the desire to comply with group expectations

among blacks is so strong that it can actually alter the distribution of black party identification. The

interaction of black interviewers with black respondents represents a special type of controlled social

interaction that, when compared to the responses given to non-black (mostly white) interviewers,

allows us to be reasonably confident that differences in respondent choices are likely the result of

compliance with expected racial behavior. Additionally, the 2012 ANES not only included face-to-

6 The analysis of the cumulative ANES includes all years that the ANES recorded interviewer race

(black/non-black) for face-to-face interviews. These years include 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012.

For many of the midterm elections the ANES conducted telephone interviews. The 2000 ANES

was also conducted via telephone. We did not use the 2004 ANES since interviewer race was only

recorded as white or nonwhite. In an effort to avoid contamination effects all analysis relies only on

pre-election interviews.

7 While the 2016 ANES was available at the time of the submission of this paper, its interviewer

characteristics measures were not yet available.

11

face interviews but also conducted simultaneous interviews online. The use of the data from the

online interview sample will give us something approximating a control group, allowing us to

compare how blacks would respond to identical questions without the biases associated with an

interviewer’s presence.

This design allows us the ability to leverage these counterfactual conditions to better

understand how radicalized social constraint shapes black partisanship. We are also moving beyond

simple attitudinal models of party identification to examining how social context affects partisan

political behavior. It is also important to note that black and white interviewers in face-to-face

surveys are not typically randomly assigned to respondents. Our own correspondence with ANES

officials and documentation from the organization that conducts the GSS suggests that while

interviewers are certainly not able to select respondents (or vice versa), interviewers do tend to come

from geographic areas proximate to the respondent which may be the same city or region.8 While we

have no reason to believe this would bias blacks’ responses to the party identification question, we

nonetheless think it prudent to account for possible confounders that may emerge from this

assignment strategy. Thus, we attempt to account for the lack of random assignment in several ways.

First, we attempt to ensure the reliability of the results by replicating the analyses in multiple years of

the ANES and GSS cumulative data files that contain race of interviewer data. This includes the

1988, 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012 ANES surveys and 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016

for the GSS.9 Assuming that any biases that exist are not likely to manifest in the same way across

all years of both the ANES and the GSS our ability to replicate the effects across time and study

8 http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Publications/Interviewing_for_NORC_1947.pdf

9 Others have done analysis of race of interviewer effects using earlier years of the ANES however

this information is not included in the current ANES cumulative data file.

12

should increase confidence that any relationships we observe are not likely the result of systematic

bias in interviewer assignment.10 Secondly, we also employ multiple adjustment procedures to

account for possible confounders. We adjust for pre-treatment covariates using logistic regression

and propensity score matching. This allows the ability to essentially approximate random assignment

and compare individuals who are as similarly situated as possible across interviewer type. Lastly, we

also replicate our findings in a set of large N telephone surveys. Since telephone surveys do not

typically assign interviewers based on residential proximity (as telephone interviews are typically

conducted from centralized call centers), we can be more confident that the assignment of

interviewer to respondent more closely approximates random assignment. Similarly, compared to

face-to-face interviews, telephone surveys offer a conservative test of our argument, as the degree of

possible discomfort experienced in a telephone interview is not as strong as that experienced in face-

to-face interviews (Davis 1997).

Given this, we have the following set of expectations for the relationship between

interviewer race and partisanship. First, given that black identity is so enmeshed with Democratic

Partisanship, we expect that those black respondents who are interviewed by co-racial interviewers

will be more likely than those interviewed by non-black interviewers to identify with the Democratic

Party than with either independents or Republicans (H1). Because, we expect that in the absence of

a black interviewer, black respondents will not feel pressure to affirm their status as a group member

and conform to racial group norms, we believe that respondents interviewed by a white/non-black

interviewers or who complete the online questionnaire will report partisanship that more accurately

10 Given that all of these studies are done by the same organization, there certainly could be

something related to how all these studies are conducted that could potentially confound our results.

This is why we also employ multiple adjustment procedures.

13

reflects their individual ideological preferences. Thus, they will report partisanship that is

significantly less Democratic than those black respondents interviewed by black interviewers (H2).

These expectations (H1 and H2) are supported by previous scholarship that shows the effect of

social interaction on partisan attitudes. Klar (2014) for example, demonstrates that social context

has a significant effect on partisan based motivated reasoning. Klar compares the policy attitudes of

individuals based on their interactions with varying types of partisans to attitudes when there is no

social interaction. Engaging in social interactions (policy dialogue) with homogenous partisan

groupings resulted in heightened levels of partisan motivated reasoning for individuals that were of

the same party identification as the group. Interaction with heterogenous partisan networks resulted

in ambivalent policy positions for both strong and weak partisans (see also Klar and Krupnikov

2016). Similarly, Levitan and Vesser (2009) find that individuals in attitudinally diverse social

networks have a propensity for more ambivalence in their policy attitudes relative to those

individuals in attitudinal congruent networks.

We also expect that interviewer race should also condition self-reported Democratic

partisanship in the context of telephone surveys (H3). While we certainly expect this effect to be

much smaller in the context of the telephone survey compared to face-to-face social interaction

where there exists a greater potential for ridicule and derision, we nonetheless expect black

interviewers to constrain blacks’ expressions of Democratic Partisanship.

Lastly, we expect that the race of the interviewer will condition the effect of

liberal/conservative ideology on black partisanship (H4). We expect that the relationship between

ideology and partisanship for blacks will be strongest in the presence of a white interviewer or no

interviewer. In these contexts, we expect that conservative blacks will be less likely to identify as

Democrats. On the other hand, in the presence of a black interviewer, we believe that blacks will

exercise more constraint and suppress their ideological preferences. When interviewed by a black

14

interviewer we expect that liberal/conservative ideology will have no meaningful relationship with

black Democratic Party identification. In this context, black conservatives and black liberals should

be equally likely to identify as Democrats.

Results

To test our initial expectation (H1) that in the presence of another black person, black

Americans will seek to conform to the norm of identifying with the Democratic Party, we examine

whether the percentage of blacks who identify as Democrats, varies as a function of the race of the

interviewer in face-to-face surveys of black Americans. In Table 1 we analyze data on the

distribution of black partisanship and race of interviewer for the cumulative American National

Election Surveys (ANES) and cumulative General Social Survey (GSS).11 We analyze the results for

Democrats including leaners and Republicans including leaners and true independents. We treat

leaners as partisans for two reasons. First, there is a great deal of research that suggests that leaners

are actually partisans and behave much more like partisans than true independents (Keith et al 1986;

Greene 1999), thus it would important to know how social pressure impacts actual partisan beliefs.

Secondly, given the branching nature of the party identification question we expect that at each level

of questioning racialized social pressure exerts increased influence on black party identification.

11 We are limited to the 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012 American National Election Surveys. We

are aware that race of interviewer was collected for earlier years however race of interviewer is not

included in the ANES Cumulative file and our correspondence with the ANES suggested that they

are unable to locate these data. See Anderson, Silver and Abramson, 1988 for information on other

years.

15

Table 1. Distribution of Black Party Identification by Race of Interviewer, ANES

Cumulative File and the GSS Cumulative File (FTF Surveys), 95% CI

ANES GSS

Non-Black Interviewer

Black Interviewer

Difference

Non-Black Interviewer

Black Interviewer Difference

Republican (Inc Leaners)

7.4 [6.0, 8.8]

2.5 [1.1, 3.9]

-4.9* 8.6 [7.3, 9.9]

5.3 [3.8, 6.8]

-3.3*

Independent 12.1 [10.3, 13.8]

4.2 [2.3, 5.9]

-7.9* 15.9 [14.2, 17.7]

13.1 [10.8, 15.3]

-2.8*

Democrat (Inc Leaners)

80.5 [78.4, 82.5]

93.3 [91.1, 95.5]

12.8* 74.1 [72.0, 76.1]

81.2 [78.6, 83.8]

7.2*

N 1,357 479 1,724 848

Note: *=p<.05; Includes Democratic leaners. 95% CI in brackets.

The results presented in Table 1 show strong support for our expectation that social

pressure from other blacks to conform to norms of black political behavior increases blacks’

willingness to identify with the Democratic Party. Looking at the last row of Table 1, we see that

black respondents clearly express greater levels of Democratic partisanship in the presence of a

black interviewer. In both the cumulative ANES and cumulative GSS we observe greater reported

Democratic partisanship when respondents are interviewed by black interviewers than when they are

interviewed by non-black interviewers. In the ANES the Democratic Party identification gap

between blacks interviewed by either black versus non-black interviewers is 12.8 percentage points,

moving the percentage of blacks who identify as Democrats from about 80 percent in the presence

16

of a non-black interviewer to over 93 percent when partisanship is asked by a black interviewer.12

While the Democratic Party identification gap resulting from having a black interviewer is smaller in

the GSS, 7.2 percentage points, it is still substantively large and statistically significant. In both data

sources, the presence of a black interviewer, appears to encourage black respondents to identify as

Democrats, while similar black respondents, interviewed by non-black interviewers, identify as either

Republican or independent.

Although the results presented in Table 1 suggest that the race of the interviewer present

during face-to-face surveys can strongly influence blacks’ willingness to identify as Democrats, it is

important to keep in mind that this is not a true experimental design as neither the ANES nor the

GSS surveys randomly assign interviewers to respondents. While we can be confident that

interviewers are not likely explicitly selecting respondents based on their partisanship, we

nonetheless think it is important to account for, as best we can, any pre-existing differences that

might exist between those respondents interviewed by black interviewers and those interviewed by

white interviewers. In order to ensure that these two groups of respondents are as similar as possible

we adjust for pre-treatment respondent characteristics13 (sex, age, southern region), pre-treatment

interviewer characteristics in ANES (interviewer gender)14 and pre-treatment survey characteristics

12 When non-black interviewers are restricted to white interviewers the interviewer gap is even larger,

approximately 13 percentage points. The vast majority of non-black interviewers are white.

13 Although sex and age are technically post-treatment as these characteristics were asked by the

interviewer, they are not likely to be influenced by the interviewer.

14 ANES only.

17

(year of survey).15 We adjust for these possible confounders using both matching estimators and

logistic regression models. Once the observed differences in confounders between the treatment and

control groups have been taken into account, we then re-estimate the effects of interviewer race on

Democratic Party identification (including leaners). The results from this analysis are presented in

Table 2A and 2B. The first rows of Table 2A and 2B present the raw unadjusted percentages of

black Democratic Partisanship by race of interviewer pooled across all years of the ANES and GSS

that we have race of interviewer data (same as last row of Table 1), the second rows present the

results of race of interviewer effects adjusting for pretreatment characteristics using logistic

regression and the last rows of Table 2A and 2B present race of interviewer effects on Democratic

partisanship adjusting for pretreatment characteristics using propensity score matching. Comparing

across these different adjustment strategies we see that while the adjustments for pre-treatment

covariates at times reduce the effect of the black interviewer on black Democratic Party

identification, the effect remains large and statistically significant in both data sources. These results

should make us more confident that what we are observing is in fact the result of black Americans

altering their self-reported Democratic Partisanship in response to the race of the person

interviewing them and not any preexisting difference in the type of respondents interviewed by black

and white interviewers. This change in partisan affiliation supports our claim that when one’s role as

15 As all questions are asked during the survey process we do not adjust for any measures that would

likely be influenced by the treatments. We adjust on age, sex, region and year of survey because we

see these the variables least likely to be influenced by the treatment, thus any differences across

black and white interviewer are likely the result of preexisting differences which could potentially

contaminate our treatment effect.

18

a group member has the potential to be challenged or subject to negative sanctions from racial in-

group members, blacks alter their behavior to be more in line with the established group norm. 16

Table 2A & 2B. Percentage of Self-Identified Black Democrats (Including Leaners) by Race

of Interviewer, ANES & GSS Cumulative Files

ANES Non-Black Interviewer Black Interviewer Difference

Unadjusted

95% CI 80.5

[78.4, 82.5] 93.3

[91.1, 95.5] 12.8*

Adjusted:

Logistic Regression 81.2 91.9 10.7*

95% CI [79.1, 83.2] [89.2, 94.7]

Propensity Score Matching (ATE)

95% CI

7.3*

Note: *=p<.05; Pre-treatment adjustments for year of survey, age, sex, south, married, interviewer

gender. 95% CI in brackets.

GSS Non-Black Interviewer Black Interviewer Difference

Unadjusted

95% CI 74.1

[72.0, 76.1] 81.2

[78.6, 83.8] 7.2*

Adjusted:

16 Using the 2012 ANES we were also able to adjust for the percentage of blacks in the respondent’s

neighborhood (zipcode). These adjustments had no measurable impact. See Table A1 in the

Appendix for the analysis.

19

Logistic Regression 74.2 81.4 7.2*

95% CI [71.1, 77.2] [77.6, 85.2]

Propensity Score Matching (ATE)

95% CI

9.5*

Note: *=p<.05; Pre-treatment adjustments for year of survey, age, sex, south. 95% CI in brackets.

To further ensure that this relationship is not simply a design artifact of face-to-face surveys

we also test for this effect in the context of telephone surveys. Again, one concern with face-to-face

surveys such as the ANES is that they tend to assign interviewers from areas proximate to the

respondent, as a result it is possible that black interviewers are more likely to interview a certain type

of black person who may for whatever reason be more predisposed to identify as a Democrat.

Although we are confident that we sufficiently account for much of this difference with the

adjustment procedures presented above and in particular the adjustments for percentage black in

one’s neighborhood presented in Appendix A1, to add another layer of certainty that what we are

observing is in fact the result of racialized context we replicate our analysis in the context of a phone

survey. Phone surveys generally operate from centralized call centers and to the extent there is no

explicit attempts to match interviewers by some criteria related to the race or background of the

respondent, telephone surveys may better meet the “as if random” criteria of a good quasi-

experimental design ensuring more equivalent groupings. There are, however, drawbacks to using

telephone surveys to test this question. In particular, the social distance between interviewer and

respondent during phone surveys, can greatly reduce our ability to observe a treatment effect.

Although phone surveys do not eliminate the potential threat posed by the interviewer, interviewer

behaviors such as facial gestures and body language cannot be conveyed over the phone. As a result,

we cannot expect the effect of interviewer race on Democratic Party identification to be as large as

20

that observed in the face-to-face context. Similarly, given the ambiguity present in determining a

person’s racial background via voice recognition we would expect there to be significantly more

variation in individual responses to the treatment (interviewer race). In sum, while we certainly

expect black interviewers to heighten black Democratic Party identification (H3), we also expect this

effect to be considerably smaller than that observed in face-to-face interviews as phone surveys

represents a somewhat less direct test of our theory.

To test this, we examine public opinion data from the widely available Pew Research Center

data archives and Gallup News Service Polls.17 These data are useful because both are publicly

available data sources that consistently report interviewer race, Pew, after 2007, and Gallup after the

middle of 2011. These data sources also have measures of party identification and identify leaning

Democrats and Republicans. Because we expect small effects in response to interviewer race over

the phone and because the average survey from these sources has only about 150 black respondents

we pooled over 100 randomly selected surveys from Pew’s U.S. Politics & Policy data archive from

2008 to 2014 and more than 50 Gallup News Service Polls from the middle of 2011 to the middle of

2015. The result is a dataset with 13,138 black respondents from the Pew data and 4,648 black

respondents from the Gallup data with corresponding race of interviewer and party identification

data.18

17 http://www.people-press.org/category/datasets/

18 The advantage of using Pew and Gallup data over the pooling the few academic phone surveys of

African Americans is 1) the Pew surveys give us relative consistency in sample design and data

collection procedure. 2) Both Pew and Gallup data are clustered around the same time period as our

face-to-face surveys while most of the well known academic phone surveys of blacks were done in

the 1980’s and 1990’s. 3) We can have much more statistical power using Pew and Gallup data.

21

22

Table 3. Distribution of Black Party Identification by Race of Interviewer, Pew and Gallup Cumulative File (Telephone Survey)

Pew (2008-2014) Gallup (2011-2015)

Non-Black Interviewer

Black Interviewer

Difference

Non-Black Interviewer

Black Interviewer Difference

Republican (Inc Leaners)

9.5 [8.8, 10.2]

7.9 [7.3, 8.5]

-1.6* 15.5 [14.4, 16.6]

13.9 [10.9, 17.0]

-1.6

Independent 8.9 [8.2, 9.7]

8.4 [7.8, 9.1]

-.5 10.8 [9.8, 11.7]

7.6 [5.2, 9.9]

-3.2*

Democrat (Inc Leaners)

81.6 [80.6, 82.5]

83.7 [82.8, 84.5]

2.1* 73.7 [72.4, 75.1]

78.5 [74.8, 82.1]

4.8*

N

5851

7287

4160 488

Note: *=p<.05 Includes Democratic leaners. Non-black only includes white. 95% CI in brackets.

The results of this analysis are presented in Table 3. Here we see that in the pooled Pew data

that there are, on average, 2.1 percent more blacks identifying as Democrats when they are

interviewed by black interviewers and in the Gallup data that number increases to 4.7 percent. These

results are as we expected smaller than what we observed in the face-to-face studies but not only are

they statistically significant (p=.00), they are also substantively meaningful in that they replicate the

findings of the face-to-face studies while at the same time offering a more conservative test of our

expectations.

Race of Interviewer Effect in Face-to-Face and Online Interviews

To this point we have seen strong evidence for our role identity argument, observing that

there is in fact a strong connection between interviewer race and reporting of Democratic Party

identification among black respondents in face-to-face and telephone surveys. When black

23

respondents are interviewed by black interviewers they appear to express significantly greater levels

of Democratic Party identification. We have also seen that this relationship remains quite strong

even when controlling for pretreatment characteristics of the respondent and survey context. While

we certainly see these results as compelling, the nature of this relationship is still somewhat unclear.

For example, instead of adhering to norms of black political behavior, when interviewed by a black

interviewer, blacks may instead be responding to the white interviewer. Davis (1997) posits that

when interviewed by a white individual, black respondents are more likely to respond in counter-

stereotypic ways to distance themselves from other blacks (320). Given that the nature of white

partisanship is more heterogeneous than it is for blacks, when interviewed by a white person, black

respondents who are not sure of the interviewer’s partisan leaning may simply desire to portray

themselves as less stereotypical. In the results presented thus far, we have only compared the effects

of black interviewers to white interviewers, what we still do not know is what blacks’ partisanship would

be in the absence any interviewer (or a control). Without a comparison group (control) we cannot

confidently say whether what we are observing is the effect of a black interviewer encouraging

blacks to identify as Democrats or alternatively white interviewers encouraging blacks to report less

Democratic identification, or both. Knowing what black partisanship would be in the absence an

interviewer would be particularly useful because it would give us a baseline group by which we could

sort out the effects of black and white interviewers on black Democratic Party identification. Indeed,

this is a problem that characterizes much of the existing research on race of interviewer effects (see

Rhodes 1994).

To get around this problem, we turn to the 2012 ANES. In addition to having results for

those who participated in face-to-face interviews with white and black interviewers, the 2012 ANES

also featured an online component which was conducted at roughly the same time as the face-to-

face survey and asked identical questions but was completely self-administered. This offers us a

24

unique opportunity to estimate the percentage of blacks who likely would have identified as

Democrats in the absence of an interviewer (H2).19 The effect of interviewer race by mode of survey

on Democratic Partisanship from the 2012 ANES is presented in Table 4. The results presented in

Table 4 reveal that in the presence of a non-black interviewer, 84% of blacks identified as

Democrats but in the presence of a black interviewer that number increases by 11 percentage points

to 96%.20 When we compare these results to respondents who completed the online questionnaire,

we see that the percentage of blacks who identify as Democrats in our online control group is 85%,

which is essentially indistinguishable from the reported Democratic partisanship of those blacks

interviewed by non-black interviewers (.1 percentage point difference) and about 11 percentage

points less than that of blacks interviewed by black interviewers.

The lack of random assignment to the interviewer conditions and to the online questionnaire

suggest that we should once again adjust for pretreatment characteristics. Because the online mode

had no interviewers we will not be able to adjust for interviewer characteristics, however we do have

respondent characteristics that were not likely affected but the treatment: gender, age, living in the

south. Once again, the results of adjustments appear to do very little to alter the relationship

between interviewer race and Democratic Party identification (See Appendix A1 for Results). This

particular pattern of results confirms our expectations (H2) that black interviewers have a unique

19 We understand that there are very different procedures underlying how the online and FTF

samples of the 2012 ANES were drawn. To account for these differences we will, later in this paper,

employ adjustment procedures meant to obtain balance.

20 The 2012 ANES has a more nuanced measure of race than that included in the cumulative file.

Here we include all individuals who identify as black while the ANES cumulative file only includes

non-Hispanic blacks.

25

effect on how black respondents report their partisanship during surveys. Returning to our role

identity argument, these results show that social interactions which lead to concern for potential

sanctions or activating one’s willingness to conform to group expectations leads to changes in a

black individual’s reported affiliation with the Democratic Party.

Table 4. Distribution of Black Party Identification by Race of Interviewer and Online Mode,

2012 ANES (FTF and Online), 95% CI

Online

(Control) Non-Black Interviewer

Black Interviewer Difference

(A) (B) (C) (B-A) (C-A)

Republican (Inc Learners)

5.1 [3.2, 6.9]

7.2 [3.9, 10.5]

1.9 [0.2, 3.7]

2.1 -3.1*

Independent 9.9 [7.4, 12.4]

8.9 [5.2, 12.5]

1.6 [0.0, 3.1]

-1.0 -8.4*

Democrat 85.0 83.9 96.4 -0.1 11.4*

(Inc Leaners) [82.0,87.9] [79.2, 88.6] [94.2,98.7]

N 554 237 255

Note: *=p<.05. 95% CI in brackets.

Who is Constrained?

We have provided more evidence for our role identity argument by showing that the

presence of a black interviewer creates a social interaction through which blacks feel compelled by

racialized social pressure to conform to racial group expectations (i.e. identifying as a Democrat), we

now turn to examining who exactly is being constrained by this racialized interaction. As discussed

earlier, given the widespread awareness of the norm of identifying as a Democrat within the black

community, we believe that it is those individuals who have ideological reasons for behaving in ways

inconsistent with the racial group norm, in particular black conservatives, that will be the most likely

26

to be constrained in the presence of a black interviewer (H4). Absent this social interaction with a

co-racial interviewer, we believe that blacks who identify as ideological conservatives will be less likely

to identify as Democrats because there will be little if any social pressure to conform to group

expectations. However, because black conservatives are very much aware of the social consequences

of defecting from the norm of Democratic partisanship that exists within the black community,

when questioned about their partisanship by a black interviewer they will feel constrained by these

social expectations and instead choose to behave in a way inconsistent with their own ideological

interest and identify as Democrats so as not to jeopardize their standing in the eyes of a fellow racial

group member.

Figures 3A- 3F. Black Democratic Party Identification by Liberal/Conservative Ideology

and Race of Interviewer, 95% Confidence Intervals

1988-2012 ANES

3A. 7-Point Party ID 3B. Democratic PID vs. Independent & Republican

Note: Marginal effect of liberal/conservative ideology on probability of identifying as Democrat.

Includes controls for sex, age, south, interviewer sex and study year fixed effects.

27

2004-2016 GSS

3C. 7-Point Party ID 3D. Democratic PID vs. Independent & Republican

Note: Marginal effect of liberal/conservative ideology on probability of identifying as Democrat. Includes controls for sex, age, south, interviewer sex and study year fixed effects.

2012 ANES

3E. 7-Point Party ID 3F. Democratic PID vs. Independent & Republican

Note: Marginal effect of liberal/conservative ideology on probability of identifying as Democrat. Includes controls for sex, age, south.

Figures 3A-3F summarize the effect of the interviewer’s race on blacks’ self-reported 7-

point party identification and 2-point Democratic partisanship by the respondent’s score on the 7-

point liberal/conservative ideology measure in the 1988-2012 cumulative ANES, 2004-2016 GSS

28

and the 2012 ANES.21 Beginning with those blacks interviewed by non-black interviewers we see

that across all three data sources, the probability of a black person identifying as a Democrat

declines sharply as they become more conservative. In the 1988-2008 cumulative ANES (Figure 3B),

we see the probability of a black person identifying as Democrat decreases by more than 20

percentage points from around .90 among blacks that are strong liberals to about .60 for blacks that

are strong conservatives. Not only is this decrease statically significant (p<.05), but it is also roughly

the same magnitude as the decrease in the GSS surveys (3D). In the 2012 ANES (3F), the difference

is even greater with the model predicting .97 probability of identifying as a Democrat among strong

liberals interviewed by non-black interviewers and a .56 probability of identifying as Democrat

among self-identified strong conservative blacks, a 41 point decrease (p=.00) in the probably of

identifying as a Democrat.

A similar pattern exists for black respondents who answered the 2012 online survey. Free of

the constraints that an interviewer might impose, the model predicts that there is roughly a .96

probably of black liberals in the online portion of the ANES identifying as Democrats and only a .49

probably of black conservatives in the online 2012 ANES identifying as Democrats. This represents

a 47 point decrease (p=.00) in the probably of identifying as a Democrat; a pattern consistent with

standard accounts of how liberal/conservative ideology should relate to party identification.

Turning our attention to the black interviewer condition we see that this well recognized

relationship between party and ideology is broken when blacks are asked about their partisanship by

21 Because there is not a well understood norm in the black community with regard to ideology, we

do not expect it to vary as a function of the interviewer's race. In the 2012 ANES the correlation

between race of interviewer and ideology is .02 (p=.53) in the GSS it is .00 (p=.88) and in the

cumulative ANES it is .07 (p<.00).

29

a black interviewer. Consistent with our expectations, it appears that when interviewed by a black

interviewer, black Americans regardless of ideology express a strong and largely undifferentiated

willingness to identify as Democrats. As we can see in the ANES analysis, while it is not surprising

that nearly all liberals in the black interviewer conditions identify as Democrats, in neither the

cumulative ANES nor the 2012 ANES does the probability of black conservatives identifying as

Democrats ever dip below .90 when a black interviewer is present. While black interviewers exert

less constraint in the GSS data, there nonetheless exists little change in predicted party identification

across ideology measures for either the 7-point Party Identification measure or Democratic PID

measure. In fact, the interactive model testing the ability of black interviewers to conditioning the

effects of ideology on both the 7-point party identification and Democratic PID measure, we

observe a statically significant (p<.05) interaction effect for all of the 7-point party identification

models and for the 2-point Democratic PID model in the cumulative ANES (p<.05) and

Cumulative GSS (p=.10).22 These results suggest that the presence of a black interviewer almost

completely constrains black conservatives, largely eliminating the link between ideology and

partisanship for blacks.

Lastly, if we are correct that the effect of black interviewers on black Democratic

Partisanship is the result of black interviewers holding black conservatives accountable to the norms

22 The lack of a statically significant interaction result in the Democratic ID models for the 2012

ANES may be the result of a lack of statistical power, particularly at the tails of conservative

ideology. While we would ideally like a larger sample our ability to find statically significant

interaction effects in the Cumulative ANES and GSS along with all of the 7-point PID scale models

makes us confident that black interviewers are in fact altering the effect of ideology on black party

identification.

30

of black political behavior then we should also be able to observe this effect across other measures

of conservatism. Therefore, we examine the ability of black interviewers to condition the

relationship between expression of Democratic partisanship and two distinct forms of conservatism:

economic/free market conservatism and moral/traditionalist conservatism. Free market

conservatism has its basis in the belief that government should play only a very limited role in

regulating the U.S. economy. We measure this concept with two questions from the 2012 ANES

that assess blacks’ opinions about how much government regulation of business is good for society

and whether the free market or government is better equipped to handle today's complicated

problems. Conservative responses to these questions prioritize free market solutions and downplay

government intervention. We measure moral/traditionalist conservatism with a number of measures

that assess the need to preserve traditional lifestyles such as “do you think newer lifestyles are

contributing to the breakdown of society?” and “how tolerant should society be of people who have

different moral standards?” Conservative responses to these questions prioritize the need to

preserve traditional values and ways of living. Both these concepts are measured in the 2012 ANES.

Figures 4A – 4D. Economic/Free Market and Moral/Traditionalist Conservatism by Black

Democratic Party Identification and Race of Interviewer/Mode, 2012 ANES, 95% Confidence Intervals

4A. 7-Point Party ID 4B. Democratic PID vs. Independent & Republican

31

4C. 7-Point Party ID 4D. Democratic PID vs. Independent & Republican

Note: See Appendix for model estimates

Figures 4A to 4D summarize the results of this analysis. We see that, generally both the free

market and moral/traditionalist results seem to mirror that of the liberal/conservative ideology

results presented in Figure 3. For blacks in the white interviewer and online conditions the more

conservative the respondent, the less likely he or she is to identify as a Democrat and for blacks in

the black interviewer condition the relationship between these ideological values and Democratic

partisanship is once again essentially zero. Interestingly, there appears to be a slight increase in

Democratic partisanship among morally conservative blacks interviewed by a black interviewer. This

we think highlights the interesting confluence of black moral conservativism and black Democratic

Partisanship that exist among religious blacks and the black church (McDaniel 2008).

The results from this analysis demonstrate that social interactions between black individuals

can powerfully constrain black partisan political behavior. As we have seen, those blacks who have

ideological reasons for defecting from the group norm of political behavior, black conservatives,

resist doing so in the presence of a black interviewer. However, when allowed to answer these

questions in the privacy of their own homes or when interviewed by a white interviewer, black

conservatives behave as one might expect, by identifying as independents or Republicans. These

findings complement the previous analysis presented and provide strong support for role identity

32

theory’s ability to explain black Democratic Party affiliations maintenance. Social interactions with

fellow group members constrain black political behavior, and that the presence of other blacks

induces norm conformity because blacks succumb to racialized social pressure in order to avoid

negative sanctions from racial group members.

Conclusion & Implications

In this paper, we sought to investigate the factors that explain the persistence of African

Americans’ overwhelming support for the Democratic Party. Despite the numerous political

alternatives and economic incentives offered to blacks by the Republican Party and despite lure of

political independence and third-party identification, the vast majority of blacks still affiliate with the

Democratic Party. Existing literature offers linked/shared fate as an explanation for this unwavering

affiliation, but closer examination shows that the relationship between shared fate and the

Democratic Party affiliation is, at best, weak. This leads to the question- How have African

Americans been able to maintain such strong support for the Democratic Party?

We have argued that, supporting the Democratic Party is one of the most well defined and

visible norms of the black community, and that racialized social norms can lead black individuals to

constrain their behavior in order to stay within the bounds of black community expectations. We

position this argument in the context of role identity theory which suggests that strong black

support for the Democratic Party results from constraints placed on blacks by racialized social

pressure meant to maintain adherence to the norms and expectations of the group. This theoretical

framework moves beyond the standard linked fate model which suggest that black political

behavior/party identification results from a psychological attachment to the racial group to a model

that relies more on social connections and the perceptible social costs and benefits that come with

compliance with and defection from the roles and norms associated with these social attachments.

33

We have offered a great deal of evidence to support this claim. Here we elucidate the

mechanism underlying the process of social control by examining how partisanship varies by the

race of the interviewer in cumulative 1988-2008 and 2012 American National Election Studies, The

General Social Survey and Pew and Gallup news polls. Our results reveal that simply being in the

presence of a black individual significantly alters the behavior of blacks, causing them to fall more in

line with the partisan expectations of the black community. We observe that blacks who were

interviewed by a black individual show significantly higher identification with the Democratic Party.

We also showed that identification with the Democratic Party was greatest among those blacks that

hold conservative political dispositions, demonstrating that racialized social context most effectively

constrains those blacks who have an ideological incentive to defect from this norm.

This study adds a great deal to our knowledge of black political behavior. First, it deviates

significantly from existing literature as it offers an alternative explanation for how black racial

identity factors into black decision making; suggesting that black partisanship has more to do with

blacks’ sense of what is expected of them from other blacks than their perceptions of how what

happens to blacks as a group affects them as individuals. Moreover, we believe that the inclination to

fall within the boundaries of the group’s norms, despite the potential for going against one’s

ideological self-interest, is driven by a desire to be accepted and respected amongst fellow blacks.

Behaving in a way consistent with the group’s expectations helps to affirm one’s status within the

group while deviating from these expectations can raise questions about an individual’s commitment

to the group, and potentially open one up to sanctions. We show that concern about being

considered an outcast or a sellout leads those blacks, who may otherwise not identify with the group

norm, to affiliate with the Democratic Party.

34

References

Allen, R. L., Dawson, M. C., & Brown, R. E. (1989). A schema-based approach to modeling an

African-American racial belief system. American Political Science Review, 83(02), 421-441.

Brown, R. A., & Shaw, T. C. (2002). Separate nations: Two attitudinal dimensions of black

nationalism. Journal of Politics, 64(1), 22-44.

Brewer, M. B. (2001). The many faces of social identity: Implications for political psychology.

Political Psychology, 22(1), 115-125.

Callero, Peter L. (1985). Role-identity salience. Social Psychology Quarterly, 48(3), 203-215.

Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, Donald, E. (1960). The American Voter. Wiley,

New York.

Davis, D. W. (1997). Nonrandom measurement error and race of interviewer effects among African

Americans. Public Opinion Quarterly, 183-207.

Davis, D. W. (1997). The direction of race of interviewer effects among African-Americans:

Donning the black mask. American Journal of Political Science, 309-322.

Dawson, M. C. (1994). Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton University

Press.

Dawson, M. C. (2003). Black visions: The roots of contemporary African-American political ideologies.

University of Chicago Press.

Gay, C. (2004). Putting race in context: Identifying the environmental determinants of black racial

attitudes. American Political Science Review, 98(04), 547-562.

Greene, S. (1999). Understanding party identification: A social identity approach. Political Psychology,

20(2), 393-403.

Gurin, P., Hatchett, S., & Jackson, J. S. (1990). Hope and independence: Blacks' response to electoral and party

politics. Russell Sage Foundation.

35

Hajnal, Z. L., & Lee, T. (2011). Why Americans don't join the party: Race, immigration, and the failure (of

political parties) to engage the electorate. Princeton University Press.

Hogg, M. A., Terry, D.J., White, K. M. (1995). A tale of two theories: A critical comparison of

identity theory with social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly 58(4), 255-269.

Huddy, Leonie, Lilliana Mason, and Lene Aarøe. "Expressive partisanship: Campaign involvement,

political emotion, and partisan identity." American Political Science Review 109.1 (2015): 1-

17.

Hutchings, Vincent L., and Hakeem Jefferson. Out of Options? Blacks and Support for the

Democratic Party. World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Montreal. 2014.

Keith, B. E., Magleby, D. B., Nelson, C. J., Orr, E., Westlye, M. C., & Wolfinger, R. E. (1986). The

partisan affinities of independent ‘leaners’. British Journal of Political Science, 16(02), 155-185.

Kinder, Donald R., and Nathan P. Kalmoe. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the

American public. University of Chicago Press.

Klar, S. (2014). Partisanship in a social setting. American Journal of Political Science, 58(3), 687-704.

Klar, S., & Krupnikov, Y. (2016). Independent politics. Cambridge University Press.

Levitan, L. C., & Vesser, P. S. (2009). Social network composition and attitude strength: Exploring

the dynamics within newly formed social networks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,

45(5), 1057-1067.

Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass.

Harvard University Press.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society (Vol. 111). University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Miller, A. H., Gurin, P., Gurin, G., & Malanchuk, O. (1981). Group consciousness and political

participation. American Journal of Political Science, 494-511.

36

Philpot, T. S. (2017). Conservative but Not Republican: The Paradox of Party Identification and Ideology among

African Americans. Cambridge University Press.

Rhodes, Penny J. (1994). Race-of-interviewer effects: A brief comment. Sociology, 28(2), 547-558.

Rigueur, L. W. (2014). The loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic politics and the pursuit of power.

Princeton University Press.

Simien, E. M. (2005). Race, gender, and linked fate. Journal of Black Studies, 35(5), 529-550.

Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: A social. Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The social psychology of

intergroup relations, 33(47), 74. Chicago

Tate, K. (1992). From protest to politics: The new black voters in American elections. Harvard University

Press.

Tate, K. (2010). What's going on?: Political incorporation and the transformation of black public opinion.

Georgetown University Press. Chicago

Weeks, M. F., & Moore, R. P. (1981). Ethnicity-of-interviewer effects on ethnic respondents. Public

Opinion Quarterly, 45(2), 245-249.

White, I. K. (2007). When race matters and when it doesn't: Racial group differences in response to

racial cues. American Political Science Review, 101(02), 339-354

White, I. K., Laird, C. N., & Allen, T. D. (2014). Selling Out?: The Politics of Navigating Conflicts

Between Racial Group Interest and Self-Interest. American Political Science Review, 108(04),

783-800.

Wilkes, R., & Iceland, J. (2004). Hypersegregation in the twenty-first century. Demography, 41(1), 23-

36.

Williams, D. R., & Collins, C. (2001). Racial residential segregation: a fundamental cause of racial

disparities in health. Public health reports, 116(5), 404-416.

37

Appendix

Adjustment of percentage of blacks in zipcode:

Table A1. Percentage of Self-Identified Black Democrats (Including Leaners) by Race of

Interviewer, 2012 ANES

ANES Non-Black Interviewer Black Interviewer Difference

Unadjusted

95% CI 82

[75, 87] 96

[94, 99] 14*

Adjusted:

Logistic Regression 88 96 8*

95% CI [81, 94] [94, 99]

Propensity Score Matching

95% CI

79 96 17*

[74, 84] [94, 99]

Note: *=p<.05; Pre-treatment adjustments percentage of blacks in zipcode, age, sex, south, married, interviewer gender. 95% CI in brackets. Adjusted and unadjusted results were calculated using the same sample of respondents accounting for listwise deletion.

Using the 2012 ANES we were also able to adjust for the percentage of blacks in the respondent’s neighborhood (zipcode). These adjustments, presented in Table A1, also had no real measurable impact on the effect that black interviewers had on black Democratic Party identification. Although, using logistic regression adjustments, the difference in race of interviewer effects between the adjusted and raw percentage of blacks who identify as Democrats decreases by 6 percentage points, there remains an 8 percentage-point difference between the rate of Democratic Party identification among blacks interviewed by black vs. non-black interviewers. On the other hand, propensity score matching actually increases the difference between the rate of Democratic Party identification among blacks interviewed by a black vs. a non-black interviewer by about 3 percentage points. These results should help allay concerns about the role that geographic biases interviewer assignment might play in mediating the effect that black interviewers have on black Democratic Party identification.